


Nightmares

by DontTrustLoserCandy



Series: Spranne Against The World [1]
Category: Amphibia (Cartoon)
Genre: Comfort, Fluff and Humor, Gen, HORSES - freeform, Nightmares, Sleepovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-04
Updated: 2019-09-04
Packaged: 2020-10-09 22:20:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20517350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DontTrustLoserCandy/pseuds/DontTrustLoserCandy
Summary: Sprig didn't dream often and, when he did, it was rare for his dreams to not benicedreams.Even then, the not nice dreams, as much as they were Not Nice, were rarely anything scarier than running away from some unseen predator in the forest or realizing he forgot his pants at home and have the entire village laugh at him.This one wasn't like that.





	Nightmares

**Author's Note:**

> Believe it or not, I wrote a fair bit of this fic before Night at the Inn even came out. And lo and behold, we got a canon sleepover! :DD Mind you, a full-family one, but still. That's some soft family feels shit right there.  
(And now I finally managed to finish this. Whoops.)  
So yes!! Anyway!!!! Enjoy~~

Sprig woke up with a start, body jittery and skin feeling uncomfortably on the side of dry. His lungs felt too small as he heaved, coiled tight next to his heart, and he remembered screaming out in his dream. Screaming in fear, in horror, as Anne—

Sprig shuddered.

Looking around, he realized he'd fallen off his hammock at some point, bed sheet tangled all over his limbs. The shirt he'd stolen from Anne was now not only slimy with his mucus but also filthy from rolling on the floor in his sleep.

With a deep breath, Sprig shook the shakiness off his arms and legs, and slowly got back on his feet.

As if by instinct, he felt himself looking towards the opposite side of the room. Then, slower, he looked around for the telltale of any hidden monsters with glowing eyes or—

Nothing. There was nothing there. Of course there wasn't.

Sprig sighed and clung to his dirty shirt.

"It's okay, just a bad dream. Just need... to go back to sleep," he muttered to himself, climbing into the hammock and sitting with his knees close to his chest. "Just need... to sleep."

He stared at the room, mind going blank at the idea, and frowned.

The shadows looked too long under the red moonlight spilling from his window.

Unnerved, he tapped on the mushroom next to him, lighting the room up in a soft glow, and slowly lied down.

If it was only one light, surely it would be okay and wouldn't attract the fireflies, right? Anne had spent _hours_ with the lights on reading magazines and books and eating loud snacks while they'd roomed together, after all.

Anne...

Sprig curled into himself and frowned down at his knees.

He wasn't a tadpole anymore. Even then, he knew Hop Pop was a _kicker_. While he would let Sprig sleep with him if he asked (and that was _if_ he even managed to wake the old frog up: Hop Pop slept like the dead), he wouldn't rest much.

Meanwhile, Polly was a baby and her bucket was too small for two.

But Sprig... Sprig wasn't sure if Anne would be okay with it if he woke her up just because of some_ dumb dream_ that wouldn't let him go back to sleep. She probably wouldn't kick him out but... what if she did? Was this kind of things something friends did? Would it be weird?

Maybe he could just... go and make sure she was okay. Confirm that his bad dream had been just that, a bad dream.

He also needed to drink some water. Really, really badly.

Carefully, Sprig crawled out of his room and into the hallway. The house felt bigger, emptier, _dangerous_ with all its shadows and familiar creaking, and while Sprig knew it was all because of that stupid dream he still hurried to the washbasin. Water had never tasted sweeter.

That done, he walked to the living room and the trap door to Anne's room. The sooner he saw that everything was okay, the sooner everything would feel less _big_, right?

Slowly and as quietly as possible, Sprig nudged the trap door open, just enough to peek inside.

A familiar pair of eyes looked up at him, and blinked.

"Sprig?" Anne asked, sounding confused, and put down her magazine. "What are you doing still awake?"

"What are _you_ doing awake?" He replied automatically, used to the panic answer whenever Hop Pop caught him up after hours, and then grimaced. "I mean, uh, can I... come in?"

"Sure thing, buddy." Anne sat up, patting the spot next to her. "Come on, you're letting the breeze in."

Sprig closed the trap door behind him, and hopped to sit down on the bed.

"What, uh, what are you reading?" Sprig said, looking at the magazine with a little more interest than necessary. It was a vaguely familiar one, in that he'd seen Anne reading it before, but it wasn't one he'd personally read yet. He preferred to look at the pictures anyway, so much of what was written in those things went over his head even with Anne's explanations.

Human culture was weird.

"Oh, this? It's, ah," Anne looked down at the pages as if just realizing what they were, and shrugged. "Just, y'know, stuff. About cat-bats and stuff."

"Oh, cool," Sprig said, lamely.

The silence hung heavy between them.

"Sooooo," Anne finally said, putting away the magazine and looking at Sprig. "What's up, Sprig? Why're you still awake at this hour? You usually fall asleep pretty fast once you get in bed."

"Uh, yeah, about that." Sprig scratched his neck sheepishly. "It's kinda dumb? I just... I don't know, I guess these past weeks have been a bit intense and, uh... I had a bad dream."

"Huh." Anne blinked down at him, then looked up at the ceiling. "Yeah, nightmares really suck, don't they?"

"Night mares?" Sprig asked, latching onto the word as a welcome distraction. "What's a night mare?"

"Uh, ah, It's what we call bad dreams in my world? I guess it makes sense you guys wouldn't call them that, since you don't have, you know, horses," Anne frowned as if she'd only just realized that and felt kinda disturbed about it. Sprig had seen her make the same face when she'd brought up 'rice steamers'. "Anyways, a mare is like, a female horse? Uh, wait a sec, I have—" Anne rummaged through her bag, taking out a seemingly random magazine. Mumbling under her breath, she flipped through the pages, until she reached one with a spread. "A-ha! Here, this is a horse."

Sprig took the magazine and looked at the human hugging some... kind of four-legged, gigantic brown monster. A trail of long fur grew from its head and down its spine, colorfully braided, and its head seemed to be wearing something that _vaguely_ looked like Bessie's reins.

"Well... this explains nothing." And was actually more than a little terrifying to look at.

"That horse, that's—that's a mare, yeah? You can tell by—nevermind," Anne pointed at the page, then waved it off. "They're a bit like snails, here? Or ladybugs. Like Bessie, you know. We used to ride them to go places before cars were invented."

"Huh," Sprig tilted his head, bringing the magazine closer to his face and squinting. "...Their teeth are terrifying."

Anne snorted.

"Right? Marcy once told us a story about a child who tried to feed one a carrot and _almost got his hand eaten_." Anne gestured with her hands wildly, grin growing with every word. "Apparently it thought his jacket was a carrot too or something. They had to call security to pull the horse away from the poor kid!"

Sprig snorted, infected by Anne's smile, and tried to cover his smile with a hand.

"That's horrible!" He tried, weakly, unable to stop the fit of giggles at the thought of a human being assaulted by the furry monster.

Anne laughed.

"I know! But it's funny too!"

"I guess it is, yeah," Sprig smiled, still shaking a little with suppressed giggles. "Is that why you call them nightmares? Because horses are so scary?"

"Uh, not that I know of," Anne shrugged, grabbing the magazine and squinting down at the horse. "Horses are, like, a kid's dream pet and stuff, y'know? They're very popular among young girls. I didn't have a horse phase myself, but..." Anne shrugged, closing the magazine and throwing it on the bed. "Nightmare is just a word we use. I mean, nobody knows why 'said' means 'said', right?"

Sprig shrugged, humming in agreement and grabbing the magazine to look at the "horse" picture again. He guessed the human in the picture was a child, then, if they were so popular among human kids. Either that, or the human was _very _short.

...The horse was still terrifying _and_ terrifyingly big, though, considering Anne's size.

"Hey Anne, how big do these things get, then?"

"Hmm?" Anne blinked, then frowned. "Uh, I dunno? Bessie's size, I guess, and bigger. Never seen one face-to-face, only on tv and stuff. But there are some breeds that are so big people need _stairs_ to get on them, I remember _that _part."

Well.

"I never want to meet a horse in my life," Sprig declared cheerfully, closing the magazine with finality. _Nope!_

Anne snorted. "Yeah, a horse would be, like, waaaay too big in comparison to you guys," she said, voice light as she moved her hand up and _up_ in a mimicry of the horse's height. 

"So, there's no night mares then? Like, even scarier mares that roam the night and eat children, or something?" Sprig asked, jumping up and making his best impressions of what a child-eating horse would look like.

Anne chuckled, taking the magazine and putting it back inside her backpack.

"Nah. Although there was this one cool movie where nightmares were literal horses made of sand and..."

Sprig sat down, resting his head in his hands as he listened to Anne go on to explain the plot of the movie ("Don't have it on my phone, sorry"). It wasn't long until she was explaining the intricacies of her favorite scenes, reenacting them to her best abilities as she grew more and more animated.

It was nice and felt a little bit like back when they were roommates, except much better.

And it involved a lot less dirty clothes and obnoxious sleeping habits, too.

Before long, Sprig's eyes started to feel heavy, a traitorous yawn escaping his mouth.

Anne noticed, stopping her rambling about some sort of war with ships and people who didn't agree with each other. He hadn't quite understood all of the terminologies she threw around, but the mental images had been pretty funny nonetheless.

"Whelp, you should probably go sleep, Sprig. I'm tuckered out too." She gave a yawn of her own, which looked kinda fake in Sprig's opinion, and stretched her arms over her head.

Just with those words, Sprig felt a lot more awake.

"Uh, no, no, I'm awake! I'm okay, I just—" another yawn broke out, tears gathering on the edges of his eyes, and Anne gave him a skeptical look. Sprig deflated. "I, uh... I just don't wanna go back to my room yet."

"Hmm," Anne hummed, looking up at the trap door and scratching her knee. "Hey, wanna have a sleepover?"

"A sleepover?" Sprig frowned. "But how is it a sleepover if we already live to—_oof!_"

Anne grinned, taking the other pillow and brandishing it like a weapon.

"Come on, you can sleep on the other side of the bed and have all the blankets your cold-blooded little body wants," Anne said, moving back as Sprig grabbed the pillow he'd been smacked in the face with.

"Well, can't say no to an all free blanket buffet," Sprig grinned, lifting up his pillow. "But first, PILLOW FIGHT!"

* * *

By the time they were done, Sprig could barely stand on his feet, swaying where he was. Anne herself didn't seem much better, yawning and rubbing her eyes every few seconds.

"C'm'on Sprig," she mumbled, grabbing him by the shirt and hauling him up into her arms like a fussy tadpole. "Bedtime."

"Mmm goin'," Sprig slurred, head dropping on Anne's shoulder.

He barely felt Anne sit down on the bed, putting him down on a soft if cool surface. A blanket followed soon after, Sprig curling around it and drifting off, only just barely aware of more blankets following the first one and something much, _much _warmer lying down next to him.

He wiggled closer, keeping his mountains of blankets around him, and pressed his cheek against the source of heat.

_Warm..._

Sprig nodded off with a sigh.

* * *

Anne looked down at the small frog cuddling her arm in his sleep and smiled.

Being an only child growing up hadn't been half-bad, considering how everyone around her always complained about having to share things with their siblings or constantly getting into fights with them, but...

If this was anything like it, maybe it wasn't so bad. 

Not at all.


End file.
